Twitter has been used once again to break an important story, as last night reports were springing up on the microblogging site that Tiger Woods was in hospital after a car crash near his home.

As a hobbyist golfer myself, this was the kind of news that you don't want to hear, but was glad I knew of quickly (even if his condition was better than had been initially reported).

Was it wrong to follow a breaking story, real-time, on a social network before all of the facts had been gathered? Or is it the inevitable evolution of news reporting? At present, it really has to be a little from column A and a little from column B.

Reading about the story meant I knew what to expect when the large news organisations got their facts right and reported it as "news". I prefer knowing that an important news story is happening, but I also like the idea that a "proper" journalist is chasing it up behind-the-scenes to write an accurate report.

We can't just rely on citizen journalism to give us the real-time view of events in as detailed a way as mainstream media can, which is why the aforementioned mainstream media will still be around for many years to come (and will have to start charging online -- but that's another story).

I'm relieved that Tiger is reportedly doing OK, he's been a role-model to myself and millions of others, but this story just shows how important the sharing of news on social networks is. If Twitter wasn't around, would the news networks have jumped on the story as quickly (or even known about it) as they did last night?

Without it, we would have been several hours (or as it was a US story, and I'm based in the UK, perhaps up to a day) later, out-of-the-loop with events unfolding around the world.